A newly discovered form of chemical intermediary in the atmosphere has the ability to remove pollutants in a way that leads to cloud-formation and could potentially help offset global warming.
The existence of these so-called Criegee biradicals, which are formed when ozone reacts with a certain class of organic compounds, was theorized over fifty years ago, but they have now been created and studied in the laboratory for the first time.
According to Science Daily, the discovery was made possible through the use of a third-generation synchrotron at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory which produces an intense, tunable light that enables scientists to differentiate between molecules which contain the same atoms but arranged in different combinations.
The Criegee biradicals — named after Rudolph Criegee, who postulated their existence in the 1950′s — turn out to react with pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, much more rapidly than expected to form sulphates and nitrates. “These compounds,” Science Daily explains, “will lead to aerosol formation and ultimately to cloud formation with the potential to cool the planet.”Read it ar Raw Story
Newly discovered molecules in atmosphere may offset global warming
by Muriel Kane
That's the good news. The bad news is that "the scientists emphasize, however, that they’re a long way off from being able to control the formation of Criegee biradicals themselves, which means that the best thing we can do is preserve the environment so that it can do its job."
11 comments:
I'm more worried about global cooling.
How do we clear the atmosphere of soot created by a supervolcano or an asteroid strike. :o)
http://www.amazon.com/Supervolcano-Eruption-Harry-Turtledove/dp/0451464206/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326602162&sr=8-1
Creating clouds would create a La Nina or an El Nino ?
When the atomsphere is too thick from moisture due to the respective point in time of the La Nina / El Nino cycle then
the earth tends to slow in fractions of a fraction of seconds.
It would be better to use this to cool the ice caps.
I thnk there is an aerospace Co. out there that will cool the earth as much as anyone thinks necessary by using small rockets to disperse fine aerosols in the upper atmosphere periodically... for a few hundred million USDs per year maintenance fee.
Interesting, and no offense, but this how does it belong to an MMT site? Same for the stories about wood stoves, defibrillators and no-stain juices. This stuff belongs to a pop science site, and I bet there are plenty. It is hard to keep up with all the MMT debates as it is :)
Peter, my view is that MMT is a macro theory and the chief purpose of macro theory lies in its application as a policy instrument. Therefore everything that affects macro is of interest and all of these matters affect C, I, G, and (X-M).
Moreover, MMT integrates institutional economics, for example, and these matters matter to the major institutions that affect economics as the material life-suport system of the society.
In addition, MMT is a heterodox school that was developed to address deficiencies in the mainstream economic schools, one of which is to ignore or deny inconvenient truths.
There is also the question of marketing MMT as a design solution. If it does not address the design problem comprehensively, how can it pretend to be a solution.
Moreover, in order to come to prominence as the most attractive solution it has to be electrifying in its appeal. Any economic solutions that doesn't have good solutions to the pressing issues of the day is going nowhere, not matter how good it might be for other things. MMT shows that all the problems that we are facing can be dealt with affordably, because "affordability" is a non-issue, the only actually constraint being real resources. Therefore, most of the economics problems out there are really pseudo-problems from the MMT vantage since that are based on affordability rather than availability of real resources.
And I do look at the blog stats. Readers that come here are interested in these matters judging by the relative number of hits.
Of course, expert advice and guidance is appreciated on these matters, too, and certainly people from many disciples have things to contribute and corrections to make.
One of the problems that many heterodox economics and non-economists with an interest in economics about the economics is now practiced is that economists tend to ignore relevant knowledge provided by related fields. I am attempting to address that concern, too.
From time to time I put up things relevant to energy and energy economics because energy is the real resource that is now having the greatest impact on society and its material life-support system, therefore, on macro and economic policy as well.
There are several major issues. First there is the issue of a clean energy sources that can be scaled up and distributed cost-effectively, since this is what developed economies require to continue operating as accustomed. For example, I attribute the big resistance to admitting climate change to the realization, which I suspect is often subliminal, that facing up to this new "inconvenient truth" would involve jarring changes to accustomed lifestyle and aspirations. Cold fusion, scalable solar and wind power, etc, would change that significantly.
Secondly, there is real cost, namely negative externalities such as the effect of environmental pollution on health, environmental degradation on quality of life, and the contribution of carbon-based energy on climate change. Presently, real cost is not being included in the market price so that the market price does not reflect true value. That is unsustainable.
Thirdly, Rodger Malcolm MItchell has made a convincing case that contemporary inflations in developed countries are due chiefly to supply constraint relating to petroleum, which is monopolistic, as Warren Mosler has observed. An energy source that transcends this resource limitation would remove a major threat of inflation, if its not the major threat.
A clean, abundant and scalable energy source would also change the picture regarding productivity, employment, and a host of other primary economic concerns. Many of the present problems and challenges would evaporate.
On the other hand, if this option is not available, then availability of real resources presents major challenges to macro and economic policy going forward. Energy is the game-changer above all others.
And don't forget that geopolitics and geostrategy are energy-based. Since WWI, the Great Game has been more about energy-access than acquisition of territory. The US military is the world's largest single consumer of energy IIRC, and the Pentagon has publicly made alternative energy central to US national security and global interests. "War is the continuation of policy by other means." — Carl von Clausewitz. Political policy cannot be separated from economics policy. They are joined at the hip, and some even consider them identical.
If MMTers want to engage energy experts, energy economists and those concerned with energy, we have to be conversant with these issues.
IF MMTers want to be taken seriously as people that have through through all the major issues rigorously, such are the matters that have to be taken into consideration.
Right Tom,
If you look at govt setting a "price anchor" for labor via a JG, or JG, of BIG or whichever, that just seems to be one leg of the anchor.
The other leg has to be petroleum. If all you do is just anchor labor without anchoring petroleum, I dont think you have any real control over prices, why even bother with anchoring labor if you are not willing to anchor petroleum?
Resp,
I disagree that if MMT-ers want to be taken seriously they need to talk about energy issues. MMT should stick to economics, convince people it has credibility in this field before venturing outside.
If someone came up to me saying he has a theory of recessions, tides, bird migrations and food shortages, I would think they are a kook. Let's leave energy to physicists, they are not as clueless as economists, they don't need our help. Physics btw shows that not all-encompassing theories can be extremely successful. Quantum Mechanics says *nothing* about general relativity, and in this sense we know it is "wrong", yet it is still very useful and powerful within its scope. Conversely, General Relativity doesn't contain quantum phenomena, so is also "wrong" as a theory of everything, and is still powerful where it applies. Even Newtonian mechanics is extremely useful (got our space probes to outer planets with precision of 10 miles!), although we know it fails at boundaries of its applicability (small scales, huge masses, velocities etc).
Peter,these areas don't exist in isolation. There is an active debate in energy economics and also among some physicists about the relationship between energy and economics, sometime explicitly and sometimes implicitly. I sometimes participate in these debates at other blogs. They don't have the correct approach to the economics because they don't understand the monetary economic underpinnings that MMT provides.
On the other hand, MMT has not offered a convincing solution to the inflation constraint, which is really a resource constraint, since that constraint is now dominated by the availability of energy resources. There is no way to avoid this issue and maintain credibility as a policy instrument.
There is also the issue of negative externalities. It it not possible to approach economic policy without taking such basic issues into account as true cost. Otherwise, we are just gassing about issues.
Interesting, and no offense, but this how does it belong to an MMT site?
Basis of our economy is property rights. So long as the owner of this blog, Mike Norman, thinks Tom's posts belong on the site then they belong on this site.
:o)
"why even bother with anchoring labor if you are not willing to anchor petroleum?"
Marty Feldstein would agree.
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/06/tradeable_gas_r.html
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